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Preparing for the tough times
Jan. 11th, 2015 06:08 pmIf you're lucky, you've reached a fairly stable place, economically and socially, by the time you hit your 50s: your career is going well, yet the end of that career and the possibility of retirement to pursue other interests are in sight; kids (if you have them) have left the nest, or are finally showing signs that they may someday do so; and you have developed relationships with friends and colleagues that will both help you to enjoy the good times and help you through the tough times. I think I'm about 95% there myself, and I count my blessings daily.
The downside of reaching your 50s is that it's the age when family, friends, and colleagues start dying. In the past few years, I've lost my grandfather, my father, a father-in-law, and two colleagues who were also valued friends -- and that's not an extreme track record by any means. Everyone I know has suffered similar losses. And there are more coming. As the saying goes, "the game of life is rigged; nobody gets out alive."
The hardest thing to watch is the torture people go through as they struggle to accept their coming death or the death of a partner they've been with for most of their life. (In the case of my grandparents, after 75 years together. I'm still amazed.) The more prolonged and awful the cause of death, the worse it is. There's no way around this, short of arranging to die together before things get bad, and there are few opportunities for this, assisted suicide not yet being socially acceptable in most societies and not part of the mental map of most Westerners. Moreover, hope springs eternal; even when we're declining badly, there tend to be enough good days that we want to keep on fighting. I hope that I'll know when my time has come, and find a way to leave gracefully rather than forcing my loved ones to endure my long decline. I'll take the "short, sharp shock" every time, please.
I'm not sure there's any good solution. The loss of any loved one will always feel tragic and will put everyone through hell, at least in the short term, and that's probably a good thing. Try though we may to cherish our loved ones and let them know how important they are to us, and try though we may to see death as natural and inevitable and not something to be feared, death still leaves a huge hole in our life. And that's a good thing in some ways. It's far too easy to become "accustomed" to the presence of someone, leading us to forget just how important they are to us. When things are going well, it's easy to forget just how transient life really is, and forget to do the important things while we still can.
Though we cannot elimnate the pain, there are many things we can do to ease it. First, we must accept that we are mortal, and that the end will come for each of us -- hopefully later than sooner, but no less inevitably. This is a reminder that whether or not we might not want to stop to smell the daisies, we should spend some time thinking long and hard about whether watching yet another lame sitcom will improve our quality of life more than sniffing those flowers and appreciating their uniqueness and impermanence. Whatever the total count may be, the timer is running down on each of our lives, and we should not waste what time remains.
Second, we must remind ourselves each day to cherish each moment we have with our special people. There's no guarantee we'll ever have another such moment ever again. Let those special people know what they mean to you, so that when the much anticipated moment of joy over their presence suddenly fails to arrive, there are no secrets left unspoken. Building a network of special people is necessary, but not an unalloyed good: though friends and family provide tremendous comfort in bad times, they also increase the number of people we'll eventually lose and have to mourn. I think it's an acceptable tradeoff, but it has a price.
Third, we must discuss our ending with our loved ones and any others who will be left to pick up the mess we leave behind us. (We should also take measures to minimize that mess, thereby reducing the burden on people who will have enough tsouris to deal with already.) We should each prepare a living will that defines what medical treatments we will and will not accept when our time comes, and discuss this with those who will implement those instructions to ensure that they fully understand and (at least to some extent) can accept our wishes.
Finally, we must think occasionally about what it means both to come to an end ourselves and to watch a loved one come to that end. This is not something you should dwell on daily, casting an ever-deepening pall on your life. Neither is this something you should think about for the first time when you're standing at someone's deathbed. The shock will be terrible no matter how you prepare yourself, but preparing makes it easier to accept and endure the inevitable.
The downside of reaching your 50s is that it's the age when family, friends, and colleagues start dying. In the past few years, I've lost my grandfather, my father, a father-in-law, and two colleagues who were also valued friends -- and that's not an extreme track record by any means. Everyone I know has suffered similar losses. And there are more coming. As the saying goes, "the game of life is rigged; nobody gets out alive."
The hardest thing to watch is the torture people go through as they struggle to accept their coming death or the death of a partner they've been with for most of their life. (In the case of my grandparents, after 75 years together. I'm still amazed.) The more prolonged and awful the cause of death, the worse it is. There's no way around this, short of arranging to die together before things get bad, and there are few opportunities for this, assisted suicide not yet being socially acceptable in most societies and not part of the mental map of most Westerners. Moreover, hope springs eternal; even when we're declining badly, there tend to be enough good days that we want to keep on fighting. I hope that I'll know when my time has come, and find a way to leave gracefully rather than forcing my loved ones to endure my long decline. I'll take the "short, sharp shock" every time, please.
I'm not sure there's any good solution. The loss of any loved one will always feel tragic and will put everyone through hell, at least in the short term, and that's probably a good thing. Try though we may to cherish our loved ones and let them know how important they are to us, and try though we may to see death as natural and inevitable and not something to be feared, death still leaves a huge hole in our life. And that's a good thing in some ways. It's far too easy to become "accustomed" to the presence of someone, leading us to forget just how important they are to us. When things are going well, it's easy to forget just how transient life really is, and forget to do the important things while we still can.
Though we cannot elimnate the pain, there are many things we can do to ease it. First, we must accept that we are mortal, and that the end will come for each of us -- hopefully later than sooner, but no less inevitably. This is a reminder that whether or not we might not want to stop to smell the daisies, we should spend some time thinking long and hard about whether watching yet another lame sitcom will improve our quality of life more than sniffing those flowers and appreciating their uniqueness and impermanence. Whatever the total count may be, the timer is running down on each of our lives, and we should not waste what time remains.
Second, we must remind ourselves each day to cherish each moment we have with our special people. There's no guarantee we'll ever have another such moment ever again. Let those special people know what they mean to you, so that when the much anticipated moment of joy over their presence suddenly fails to arrive, there are no secrets left unspoken. Building a network of special people is necessary, but not an unalloyed good: though friends and family provide tremendous comfort in bad times, they also increase the number of people we'll eventually lose and have to mourn. I think it's an acceptable tradeoff, but it has a price.
Third, we must discuss our ending with our loved ones and any others who will be left to pick up the mess we leave behind us. (We should also take measures to minimize that mess, thereby reducing the burden on people who will have enough tsouris to deal with already.) We should each prepare a living will that defines what medical treatments we will and will not accept when our time comes, and discuss this with those who will implement those instructions to ensure that they fully understand and (at least to some extent) can accept our wishes.
Finally, we must think occasionally about what it means both to come to an end ourselves and to watch a loved one come to that end. This is not something you should dwell on daily, casting an ever-deepening pall on your life. Neither is this something you should think about for the first time when you're standing at someone's deathbed. The shock will be terrible no matter how you prepare yourself, but preparing makes it easier to accept and endure the inevitable.